


begin at the beginning

by thelivingautomaton



Series: two jedi, a lightsaber, and all the ghosts between them [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: (like one. one force vision.), First Meetings, Force Visions, Gen, Speculation, also the finnrey is very light don't worry, the Force works in mysterious ways, this'll probably be non-canon in about a year but I can live with that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 17:56:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8926696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelivingautomaton/pseuds/thelivingautomaton
Summary: Two Jedi and a lightsaber, surrounded by the ghosts of past and future, together. This is how it always starts. (or: Rey and Luke on the cliffs, and what comes next.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> haha I wrote this instead of studying for my chem final. Let me die in peace y’all.

This is how it starts:

A man, perched at the edge of a dark and stony cliff face over the sea, his back to the fog-shrouded waters and his hands (one flesh, one metal) at his sides. A girl -- perhaps, now, a young woman, but let us call things by their rightful names -- in front of him, the wind tugging slightly at strands of her dark hair. A lightsaber, grasped by the hilt in the girl’s hand, held forward and out in the impossibly wide space between them.

The man is Luke Skywalker, last of the Jedi and likely one of the most powerful and mysterious figures in all the galaxy. The girl is Rey, a girl (or so she thinks of herself, when she thinks of being anyone at all; it's still not a habit she's quite accustomed to); a girl who is also a Jedi -- or she _will_ be a Jedi -- or perhaps she will become something entirely different that the galaxy nonetheless calls _Jedi_ , because that’s all they know how to call someone like the person she will eventually be, that’s what all the stories and legends call it. (And it always comes down to a story, in the end.) The lightsaber, too, is dense with myth: wielded by two chosen ones of the Force, used to slaughter countless Jedi (and countless others, too), lost to the depths of an outpost in the clouds and then, somehow, found again. And now here.

Two Jedi and a lightsaber, surrounded by the ghosts of past and future, together. This is how it always starts.

She holds the lightsaber out to him, waiting. He stands there with some unidentifiable look -- one made of recognition, and grief, but there’s also a sort of kindness buried within -- and he’s waiting, too. And to Rey it seems as though everything around them is frozen, the waves and the breeze all stopped, because the galaxy, too, is waiting. And watching. Because what happens next will be the _beginning_. (Of what, she’s not sure. Nobody is. That’s why they’re all waiting.)

She’s experienced this feeling quite a few times, where time comes to a halt and the world holds its breath, ever since leaving Jakku. Maybe it’s just what happens when you interact with figures out of legend.

But then Luke’s eyes flicker from her face to the lightsaber, and something in him seems to wilt, a tiny bit. He lets out a long sigh, heavy with resignation but not quite enough to shatter the stillness between them. Not until he says, after a small pause, something Rey wasn’t expecting: “That’s not mine.” And just like that, the world starts to move forward again. The echoes of the booming surf below rise up towards the summit of the island. The wind blows a little more strongly, now pushing at Rey’s carefully-tied hair instead of merely tugging. And Luke Skywalker turns his back to her, to the lightsaber that is ( _was_ ) his, and gazes out once more over the wide expanse of the ocean.

This is not an acceptable answer for Rey. Not when it took _so much_ to get here. Leaving Jakku, something she never thought she’d do. Learning (a little) to use the Force, lifting things and _seeing_ things, like out of a bedtime story for children. Fighting with the very lightsaber she has in her hand against -- against something evil. Fighting for her _friends_ , and her breath almost catches in her throat when she thinks of all the others. Maz Kanata, who lost her home. Han, who lost his life (but Rey doesn’t dwell on him; the grief and the anger are both too raw, too bitter, if she’s not careful they’ll choke her). And Finn -- Finn, who came back to Starkiller for her. Finn, who chose to run from the darkness, and then chose to fight it. Finn, who was now lying in a makeshift hospital bed on D’Qar, his spine slashed and his smile gone, who’d she _promised_ she’d see again --

No. Hero or not, legend or not, she will _not_ allow Luke kriffing Skywalker to turn away from this.

So she scrunches her face into an expression of resolute determination and steps forward, until she’s by Luke’s side at the edge of the cliff. She faces him directly; he glances at her briefly but doesn’t turn. Under the mostly-neat beard, his mouth twitches a little -- a quirk of a smile or a scowl, Rey isn’t sure. But it doesn’t matter, because he’s not walking away and that means he’ll at least listen to her. That counts for something. It must.

She holds the lightsaber up again, this time in a more forceful gesture -- brandishing it, really. “ _T_ _ake_ it,” she says, half-angry and half-desperate, and then she realizes that the first words she’s said out loud to him are giving him an almost-order. Not a good start, really. Maker, she never was good at being persuasive (except that once, with the Stormtrooper, and it hardly counts if you have to use the Force). Rey lowers the lightsaber, barely, and trying to invest her voice with some bare measure of gentleness, she adds, “Please. It’s yours.” Leaving unspoken her _other_ plea -- _I don’t want to hang on to this any longer. I can’t._

“It _was_ mine,” Luke corrects her, “once. But not anymore.” He stares out into the distance -- not at the waters, but further than that, at something only visible to him. A memory, perhaps. After a moment’s silence, he says, “Now, I think, its time has passed. I have my own, one I forged myself. Best to leave that one -- and all that surrounds it -- behind.”

Rey has a feeling he’s talking about more than just a lightsaber, even one as important as this. But frankly, she’s never been good at puzzling out what someone is _really_ trying to say with their words, either. On Jakku, she never had to shroud what she meant, never could. The desert has no patience for obscurity -- everything is visible under the white-hot glare of the sun, and if one doesn’t say how they think and act how they say, it tends to come back and haunt them. She supposes it’s a lesson she can discard, since she’s not going back, but she doesn’t think she will. Many things about the desert are too ingrained in her now to get rid of so easily.

But all she says is, “Well, _I_ can’t keep it.” It comes out more frustrated and petulant than she intended, but when she looks at Luke’s face all she sees is a glimmer of -- amusement? Or maybe it’s simply a glint of the sun, peeking through the clouds.

“And why is that?” Luke asks her. His expression is inscrutable, and Rey _could_ try to reach out with that sense that exists beyond her other senses to get a feel on what he’s thinking -- but being the most powerful Force user in the galaxy, he’d probably push her away with no more thought than a strong, hot wind has for a grain of sand. Besides, it’d be impolite.

Rey frowns and looks at the lightsaber in her hand. “Because -- because I can’t. It’s not mine. And I can’t use it.” But those words sound hollow, even to herself. She remembers defending herself with it, blue light striking at red in the snowy, collapsing, night-filled forest. And she can’t deny that, somehow, it feels _right_ , the way it sits in her hand.

She also remembers lunging out with it, hearing the faint sizzle as it had struck flesh, standing over the wound she’d created and wanting to make _more_ , wanting to take back everything Kylo Ren had stolen from her, from the galaxy. And there was that voice, in her mind, saying she could simply kill him, that she _should_. She’d turned away from it then, repulsed by its rawness and more than a little afraid, but -- in its own way, it had felt right, too. And if the world hadn’t separated the two by falling to pieces all around them...she’s not quite sure what she would have done, given a little more time.

So no. She _can’t_ use it.

Luke, for the first time, turns his head away from the ocean and also gazes down at the lightsaber. “Seems like you know what you’re doing with it to me,” he says, sounding almost nonchalant.

“I’m just _holding_ it,” says Rey, baffled out of her train of thought.

“Exactly. You’ve already mastered half the technique.”

There’s a pause, but it feels like Luke expects a response, so Rey gives him one. “What’s the other half?” she asks, looking at him looking at the lightsaber. With his head bent slightly as it is, he’s just about as tall as her, and Rey has to stifle an out-of-place laugh. She’s not sure why it’s funny, but it is. It makes him that much more...human, to her. Not a character in a story.

But this feeling is washed away in an instant when Luke’s eyes abruptly flash up and lock with hers, giving Rey an unmistakeable _jolt_ and causing her to take an involuntary step or two back. She almost drops the lightsaber, and wouldn’t _that_ be funny, just losing the cursed thing over a cliff and letting the ocean swallow it? Yes. Hysterical.

There isn’t anything like anger in Luke’s eyes -- just a grave, quiet seriousness. “The other half,” he says, “is knowing when not to use it.” Rey, after a second, swallows and nods, and steps once again over to him. And after a few moments more, she opens her pack and puts the lightsaber back inside.

They’re both silent for a long while after that -- or it feels like a long while to Rey. She’s not yet used to this calm, this lack of action, compared to the tumultuous bustle of things _happening_ and her _making_ things happen that’s been all there is in her life recently. It reminds her a little of Jakku, of staring up at the stars in the evening, except now there’s more water in front of her than she’s ever seen in her life, and she’s not alone. Very much not alone. There’s a current of tension in the air between them, still, and Rey supposes it’s because, once more, they’re both waiting for something. This time it’s she who breaks the silence first.

“Come back with me,” Rey says, not an order this time but a plea, said so quietly even she can barely hear herself over the muffled crash of the waves below. “I need --” _You need a teacher_ , a voice (a memory, but it comes from herself, too) angrily declares in her mind, but she pushes it away quickly and corrects herself. “ _We_ need guidance. And your help. What you can do for the Resistance --”

“What I _can_ do,” Luke says, “is very different from what I _should_ do.” He takes a breath, lets it out carefully. Eyes downcast to the rocks under their feet, he continues, “I need to remain here. There’s more, much more I can do by learning all I can from the ruins. And from Jedi before me.”

Rey just stares at him, her shock quickly turning its way into a hot, hot anger that builds, and builds, until -- “ _No!_ ” she almost yells, and then her words are rushing out of her in a torrent. “You _have_ to come back, you _must_ , the First Order is declaring war and they want to finish what the Empire started and -- and your sister’s choosing to fight it, and Finn’s choosing, and _you chose_ _too_ , years ago, so you can choose again, you can --”

“I can’t,” says Luke, still focusing on the ground, and Rey is already just about sick to death of him interrupting her in that calm way of his, though he’s only done it twice.

“ _Why_ not?” she asks, daring him to give her a good enough reason. Some small part of her thinks that _she_ chose to leave the only home she’d ever known, the possibility of family returning for her, so he can damn well choose to leave a planet with nothing but saltwater and a bunch of moldy old ruins. She knows it’s selfish, knows it’s a gross simplification of what the situation really is, but she thinks it anyway.

“Because I _can’t_ ,” says Luke, and now he looks up at her, into her eyes again, but this time Rey sees a painful, bottomless grief in his gaze. And she sees, also, in her mind -- a dark, rain-shrouded field, covered with wet bodies, and a group of figures all in black, and the familiar sight of a red lightsaber shimmering in the dark, and a _mask_ \--

And then she’s back, gulping for air. She remembers seeing all of that, when she laid her hand on the lightsaber for the first time. But this time it didn’t come from the weapon. It came from Luke.

He’s still gazing at her, still with a deep sadness in his eyes, though it’s now compounded by an even deeper weariness. “I can’t go back,” he says simply.

Rey, without thinking about what she’s doing, puts a hand on his shoulder and says, “It wasn’t your fault.” Because she believes that, sincerely. Of course it wasn’t Luke’s fault, he wasn’t the one who did anything wrong. The evil was there, all along, waiting.

He shrugs. “The evil might have been there, sure, but I should have felt it, and done something.” Rey blinks and lifts her hand away, surprised despite herself, and when Luke sees her expression something almost like a laugh bubbles out of him, briefly. “Sorry,” he says. “I’m forgetting my manners. It’s been awhile since I’ve had another living person around.” Rey accepts this explanation without asking why he has to add the appendage “living.” Strange things happen when one is alone for a long time. She knows this, and she knows it probably goes double for someone sensitive to the Force.

The tension between them is gone now, at least, and that’s something. Luke keeps his eyes on her a moment longer, then lets out another sigh and turns, slowly, back to the ocean. “Whether it was my fault or not -- and it was, in part, there’s no use hiding from it -- doesn’t matter,” he continues. “Once -- very long ago, it feels now -- I was certain of what I had to do. Certain of _myself_. Now there are just...doubts. Noisy doubts.” He shrugs again, looking almost lost. “I don’t think I can trust myself to make the right choices, now. Certainly not to help anyone.”

“You can help me,” Rey blurts out, almost before she knows she’s saying it. But as soon as she hears her own words, she knows it’s the right thing to say, because it’s the truth. And she probably should have said it sooner, both to him and to herself. Luke glances at her quizzically, and she goes on, stammering a little over her words now, “I need -- I need a teacher. In the Force.” She pauses, then adds, “So _I_ can go back, and _I_ can fight.”

Luke just eyes her, a corner of his mouth raised in an ironic, somewhat bitter smile. “You realize,” he says, “that the last time I trained anybody, it ended in betrayal? Destruction? My pupil turning to the Dark side of the Force?”

“I know,” says Rey. And she can’t say, for certain, that it won’t happen again, can’t say that she’ll never hear that voice and never give in to its promises of power and control. But she tells herself she won’t anyway, because whether or not she’s ready, she _has_ to do this, right now. Not just for herself, to figure out what this thing is and who _she_ is with it, but for everyone else too, all those who’ve lost something. Including Luke, it seems.

Luke must see some of her determination in her face, because after a pause all he says is, “You’ll have to stay here, on the islands. Are you sure you want that? You must -- there must be somebody who’s waiting for you to come home.” He’s looking at her in almost a pitying way.

Rey’s not so sure about _home_ , but she does know there’s someone who’ll be waiting for her once he wakes up. She just nods, stubbornly. “What I _want_ to do,” she says, “is very different from what I _need_ to do.” This time she’s the one to make direct eye contact with him, and to her surprise -- he blinks. Maybe because he felt a jolt, too.

They stare at each other like that for a moment -- a real, fleeting moment this time, not one that makes the world slow down. Then Luke says, “I should warn you, I’m an unorthodox teacher.” That glint in his eyes is back again, and this time Rey thinks it’s _definitely_ amused.

She gives him a long, level look. “I’ve had an unorthodox life,” she says. And she thinks the conversation is settled with that, so she turns on her heel and heads back across the grassy space on top of the island, toward the stairs at the far side.

For a second, she hears only her own footsteps trudging through the grass. Then, a second set of footsteps join hers. Slower and a little hesitant at first, but only at first, and then proceeding with certainty.

Rey suddenly has a feeling -- and it might be the Force telling her something, but she thinks this time it’s her intuition, or a misguided sense of hope, or possibly both -- that deep down, this is what Luke Skywalker wanted all along. Even though he’s behind her, she can almost see, in her mind’s eye, a brief, wide grin flash across his face.

And as she begins the long traipse down the stone steps she’d climbed up not so long ago, Rey gives herself a small smile, thinking that this may not be _the_ beginning, but it’s definitely a start.

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, I'm not saying Luke _wanted_ someone to come after him and find him, and that he _knew_ whoever that person is would be sensitive and need to be trained in the Force...but c'mon, R2 had a map for a _reason_ , guys.
> 
> Anyway, the idea for this (and a series about Luke and Rey on Ahch-To as a whole) has been percolating in my head basically since I came out of the theater from seeing TFA a year ago, but it was actually seeing Rogue One that revived my Star Wars obsession and pushed me into writing this. That and I kept having plot ideas. And I needed some way to procrastinate on studying for finals. :P I'm aware there are probably some minor errors in canon with this, but I tried my best and I couldn't even watch the movie again to make sure of certain details. If I messed something up, let me know and I'll do my best to fix it.
> 
> I can't tell you when to expect the next part in this series -- I have winter break coming up, but I'll be busy and then in a month I have school again anyways. But I can tell you it'll be a direct continuation of this one, and it _will_ have other characters besides Rey and Luke, and it'll be a tiny bit more funny. I'm quite excited to begin writing it. :) And later, there will be ghosts. Boy howdy, will there be ghosts.
> 
> That's all. Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
